Spill panel requests updates on safety reviews under drilling ban

The White House's special panel on the oil spill has requested that the Interior Department supply more input on the safety studies that are included in the department's deepwater-drilling ban. "We are particularly interested in whether individual rigs, or categories of rigs, subject to the moratorium are sufficiently safe to allow the moratorium to be lifted with respect to those rigs," said the commission in a letter to Michael Bromwich, head of the agency's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.